Let the budget-tightening and streamlining in Texas government begin. With a projected $27 billion budget shortfall, the ax is bound to fall a whole lot during the 2011 Legislative session.

Almost as soon as the Legislature was seated and put to its biennial duties, the Sunset Advisory Commission voted to merge the Texas Youth Commission and the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission into a single agency that will oversee all state youth corrections programs.

The new agency — to be called the Texas Juvenile Justice Department — will focus on jailing fewer teen-aged offenders in state-run lockups and put more emphasis on community-based corrections.

The merger could save taxpayers perhaps as much as $200 million, according to Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat who chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. “Abolishing TYC at this time and combining it into a new agency makes a whole lot of sense,” Whitmire added.

The Sunset Commission also decided that both the Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas, and the fund-leaking Department of Transportation would have only one lone commissioner. That move would put two of the three Railroad Commissioners out of work and eliminate four out of five commissioners for TxDOT.

The Sunset Commission’s votes throughout the session will be drafted into legislation that the House and Senate will ultimately consider for passage.